McKinsey & Company x Artemis Joint Report: Only 1% of $35 Trillion Stablecoin Transaction Volume Represents Genuine Payments; Consumer-End Usage Is Negligible

Author: Stablecoin Insider / McKinsey × Artemis

Translation & Editing: TechFlow

TechFlow Insight: A joint report by McKinsey and Artemis does something rare in the industry: it dissects stablecoin transaction volume data. Its conclusion? Of approximately $35 trillion in annual on-chain transaction value, only about $39 billion (roughly 1%) represents genuine payment activity—of which 58% consists of business-to-business (B2B) financial operations, growing at an annual rate of 733%. Consumer-facing stablecoin usage is virtually negligible—and this is no accident. The article identifies five structural reasons explaining why the chasm between institutional and individual adoption is not a temporary gap but a systemic divide.

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The stablecoin industry faces a headline-level problem.

On one hand, raw on-chain data shows tens of trillions of dollars flowing annually across blockchains—a figure that fuels endless comparisons to Visa and Mastercard, and predictions that SWIFT will soon be replaced.

On the other hand, a landmark report released in February 2026 by McKinsey and Artemis Analytics strips away all the noise and asks a far more direct question: How much of this volume represents real payments?

The answer is approximately 1%.

Of the roughly $35 trillion in annualized stablecoin transaction volume, only about $39 billion reflects genuine end-user payments—such as supplier invoices, cross-border remittances, payroll disbursements, and card-linked point-of-sale (POS) spending. The remainder comprises trading activity, internal fund transfers, arbitrage, and automated smart contract loops.

The report concludes that inflated headline figures should serve as “the starting point for analysis—not a proxy metric for measuring payment adoption.”

Yet within this genuine $39 billion baseline lies a story worth deep examination—one that revolves almost entirely around corporate finance, not consumer wallets.

B2B Dominates: What the Data Actually Says

According to the McKinsey/Artemis analysis—based on activity data as of December 2025—business-to-business transactions accounted for $22.6 billion, or roughly 58%, of all genuine stablecoin payments.

This figure represents a staggering 733% year-on-year growth, driven primarily by supply chain payments, cross-border supplier settlements, and treasury liquidity management. Asia leads geographically in activity, though adoption is accelerating rapidly in Latin America and Europe as well.

The remainder of genuine payments breaks down as follows: payroll and remittances ($9 billion), capital markets settlement ($800 million), and card-linked POS spending ($4.5 billion).

Per McKinsey’s data, card-linked stablecoin transaction value surged an astonishing 673% year-on-year—but in absolute terms, it remains only a small fraction of B2B volumes.

For context: This $39 billion total represents just 0.02% of McKinsey’s estimate of over $20 trillion in global annual payments. Specifically, B2B stablecoin flows account for only about 0.01% of the global $16 trillion B2B payment market.

These numbers are large in the stablecoin context—but remain minuscule relative to the broader financial system.

Monthly velocity data offers an even clearer picture of momentum. Citing the McKinsey/Artemis report, BVNK notes that stablecoin monthly payment volume stood at just $5 billion in January 2024; by early 2026, it had surpassed $30 billion—a sixfold increase in under two years, with the steepest acceleration occurring in the second half of 2025.

Annualized, this velocity now exceeds $39 billion.

“Real stablecoin payments are far lower than conventional estimates—but this does not diminish stablecoins’ long-term potential as a payments rail. It simply establishes a clearer baseline for assessing where the market stands.” — McKinsey/Artemis Analytics, February 2026

Why the Gap Exists: Five Structural Forces Excluding Retail

The stark divergence between explosive B2B adoption and negligible consumer usage is no coincidence—it results from structural asymmetries that systematically favor institutional use cases over retail ones.

Here are the five forces driving this institutional gap:

1) Financial Efficiency Outweighs Consumer Convenience

Corporate treasurers are driven by concrete, quantifiable pain points: SWIFT correspondent banking chains requiring one to five business days for settlement; foreign exchange windows tying up working capital; and layered intermediary fees at every transaction touchpoint.

Stablecoins solve all three problems simultaneously. For a company paying suppliers across fifteen countries, the economic calculus is crystal clear; for a consumer buying coffee, it is not. The switching incentives on the enterprise side dwarf those for individuals by orders of magnitude.

2) Programmability Has No Retail Counterpart

Part of the B2B surge is a story of programmable payments. Smart contracts enable conditional logic—invoice triggers, delivery confirmations, escrow releases—that can automate entire accounts payable workflows at scale.

This fits naturally within corporate treasury operations, where high-value, structured, repetitive payment processes benefit enormously from automation. Retail payments lack analogous trigger-based use cases at any meaningful scale.

Consumers buying groceries don’t need programmable conditions—they need something as frictionless as swiping a card. The cognitive overhead of blockchain-native payments remains a barrier at retail, and programmability offers no relief.

3) Regulatory Architecture Favors Institutions

Following the GENIUS Act, institutional operators have already adapted their compliance infrastructure—meeting AML/CFT requirements, Travel Rule obligations, licensing standards—and built legally robust operational frameworks.

Corporate finance teams employ dedicated compliance staff capable of absorbing onboarding friction; individual consumers cannot. As a result, in most jurisdictions, on-ramps to stablecoins remain operationally complex for retail users, while merchant acceptance gaps persist globally.

Every seamless B2B payment today serves as a data point institutions cite to justify further investment—while the consumer ecosystem waits for a compliant, user-friendly entry point that has yet to emerge at scale.

4) Closed-Loop Advantage

B2B stablecoin payments succeed precisely because they operate in closed loops: businesses send to businesses, both hold wallets, both possess compliant infrastructure, and neither requires a universal merchant network.

Retail payments face the classic chicken-and-egg problem: merchants won’t invest in stablecoin acceptance infrastructure until consumers demand it; consumers won’t adopt wallets until they can spend widely.

The institutional world bypasses this entirely—operating bilaterally or within consortia, without needing any open merchant network.

5) Institutional Incentives Point Upstream

Corporate treasurers holding stablecoins gain yield, reduce FX exposure, and improve liquidity management—advantages that accrue internally. Sharing these benefits downstream—to suppliers’ suppliers, employees, or end consumers—introduces complexity or competitive vulnerability.

Extending stablecoin usage to downstream parties requires building networks that benefit those parties—not necessarily the originating finance team. Without a clear ROI driving outward network expansion, enterprises rationally choose to consolidate internal gains.

Market Context

BVNK’s own infrastructure data corroborates B2B dominance from an operator perspective. In 2025, the firm processed $30 billion in annualized stablecoin payments—a 2.3x year-on-year increase—with one-third of volume originating from the U.S. market.

Its client roster—including Worldpay, Deel, Flywire, Rapyd, and Thunes—represents leaders in cross-border B2B and payroll infrastructure—not consumer-facing applications.

As BVNK noted in its 2025 Year-End Review:

“The initial assumption that remittances and consumer transfers would lead stablecoin growth has not materialized as the primary driver; B2B has instead assumed that role.”

When—If Ever—Will Retail Catch Up?

The McKinsey/Artemis baseline renders the current state unmistakably clear. What it cannot answer is whether the institutional gap will narrow, widen, or become permanently entrenched.

Below are three plausible scenarios over the next 18 months:

Near-Term (2026): The Gap Widens Further

B2B momentum shows no signs of slowing. Monthly velocity exceeding $30 billion persists as more enterprises integrate stablecoin rails into cross-border payables and treasury operations. Consumer stablecoin POS spending grows modestly—but remains negligible in absolute terms relative to B2B volume. Even if retail adoption rates inch forward incrementally, the dollar-value gap continues widening.

Mid-Term (Late 2026–2027): Inflection Points Emerge

Several catalysts may begin bridging the gap: multi-currency stablecoins issued by banks reducing retail on-ramp friction; programmability extended to consumer applications via AI agent–managed payment delegation; and gig-economy wages paid in stablecoins, creating downstream consumer balances.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent forecasts stablecoin supply could reach $3 trillion by 2030—a trajectory implying eventual consumer network effects.

Contrarian View: Retail May Never “Catch Up”—And That May Be the Point

The most honest reading of the McKinsey data is that stablecoins may be evolving into what the report subtly implies: a programmable settlement layer for machines, finance departments, and institutions—where consumer adoption is an indirect, embedded benefit rather than a primary use case.

If this framework holds, the institutional gap isn’t a failure of adoption—it’s a feature of the technology’s natural architecture. Corporate payroll paid in stablecoins may ultimately drive downstream consumer spending, but the path from B2B infrastructure to retail wallets is long, circuitous, and contingent upon user experience breakthroughs that have yet to scale.

An Honest Baseline

The McKinsey/Artemis report achieves something more valuable than merely documenting stablecoin growth: it establishes an honest baseline the industry has conspicuously lacked.

Stripping away transactional noise, internal fund movements, and automated smart contract loops reveals a payment market genuinely growing—real payment volume doubled from 2024 to 2025—but doing so in a highly concentrated, structural, and non-coincidental way at the institutional level.

The 733% B2B growth is not a delayed consumer story—it’s a maturing financial story.

Enterprises building on stablecoin rails today are solving real operational problems—cross-border friction, correspondent bank inefficiency, working capital delays—problems entirely independent of whether consumers hold stablecoin wallets. They will continue building regardless.